have u started a thread for this mega mod your working on yet?

No, not yet. Still a little too early to get information out about it. However, I don't see why I can't show you what I've been up to with the one suicidal plane for the Japanese.

This is the Museum shot of the plane.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...pscmesayc8.jpg

The bright yellow engine cowl should be enough of a warning!!

The AI has chosen a Casablanca CV.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...psdulac3ag.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...psmqataaug.jpg

Looking good so far. Those guys on the deck better duck!

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...psy9olnkvd.jpg


I forgot I had a couple of Kamikaze planes flying around in this test mission! A double whammy.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...psdbsiaoky.jpg


I think I've got the hit points set a little high!?!

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...psdzaxbruo.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps4fukn2yt.jpg


She didn't stay afloat for very long.


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...pseabg5smp.jpg


So, I think a little more tweaking with the damage model and it's ready to go..... One more shot of it taking a crack at the Iowa.


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...pselyfne07.jpg


Anyway, my plan is to add several new planes to the Air group. I'm hoping to add a B-25, B-29, a P-36.....we'll see. I'm just learning 3D modeling so who knows what trouble I'll get into. I'd like to add the Akiga, and Kaga CV's but that's down the road.

No time table on anything, just plugging along. This time of year I can do things I normally don't have time for.

I think it's good that your making new planes. I have a few neat ideas for the game, do u want to here them?

Sure!

Ideas.......we usually have a "boat load" of them. Figuring ways to implement them into the game is the trouble.

Some things can be manipulated to have the game think it's doing something, yet through modding, the results are actually something else. We didn't really change the way the game engine works (unfortunately no one has cracked the SH4 hard code to change specific processes/outcomes....if we did the folks around here would have you banned in a minute!! Not to mention legal implications from UbiSoft), but we can change the physical appearance of a process and make it appear something new has happened within the game. There's still limitations on just what we can do.

For example, the Kamikaze plane icon on the map screen is still going to be visible at the further out zoomed views because the darn thing is a plane. Sure I can remove the plane icons completely for all planes.....doesn't TMO or RFB do that? But, I really don't want to do that. The map screen in-game is your SD radar in use. I really don't want to take away the ability of using the Nav Map to show a planes location since that's the only physical way of displaying a planes position.......except for using my Radar setup that OTC introduces. Which, when I think of it, maybe that isn't such a bad idea. Use the Radar as it was intended to find approaching planes.......but wait, the problem still exist's......the Radar will still show the Kamikaze blip traveling away from the sub after it's hit the target because the Kamikaze plane itself isn't the delivering plane, it's just a bomb dressed up like a plane. The delivering plane is invisible to us, yet the game knows exactly where it is. Will show it on the map or Radar screens, and fire away with AA weapons after the Kamikaze bomb hits the target, and the invisible delivering plane makes it's get a way.

You see, we can dress up the monkey and make him dance, but it's still just a monkey underneath!

Firstly I haven't played the game with RSRDC into the late war, so idk if this is already in a mod. My idea is to add some US heavy bombing raids on japanese bases ,like Rabaul or Balikpapan. I guess u could say that I want a mega mod that includes more aircraft events as well as other things.

Additional events to put to use additional planes is a good point. For instance, the Kamikaze plane wouldn't be of much good if it only showed up in the Museum, or when you wanted to make a specific mission for it through the Mission Editor......an Editor that not very many players know how to use.

I've got a Kamikaze plane in one of my "optional" mods for OTC...."Tokko's Revenge". Although it doesn't work as expected (it only heavily level bombs a target), I made sure it appears on several Aircraft Carrier's to be launched as the other CV based planes would. Adding it to several other land based sites would be appropriate too.

I've not looked at what Lurker did with his planes, so I don't know if he set up plane bombing routes or not......but yes, that's something that should be done. Again, there's little point in adding planes if they aren't used or left in the inventory.

You pointed out Balikpapan as a bombing site. A site I know all too well, due to my uncle (Father's brother) who's B-24 plane is still MIA from a bombing run in Oct. 1944. Dad was in the Pacific (his Tank Battalion left the States in late 1942) when he heard the news about his younger brother. Something he had a hard time getting over since his brother only joined the Air Corp due to Dad's letter's about the places he'd been to while over sea's. He qualified for pilot training, yet an offer came to him for a tail gunner position because of his small stature. He took it, because he thought the war might be over by the time he finished flight school! I have every intention of adding the 307th Long Rangers to the game.

What else you got? :yeah:

I also think it would be cool to see some of the smaller lesser known bombardments of Guadalcanal, including air raids. Again idk if RSRDC already has some of the lesser known bombardments, but I will say that it would be neat to see some air raids on Henderson and some ship bombardments, like, " the night of the battleships," which was a bombardment on Guadalcanal by the battleships, Kongo and haruna, in October 1942. Plus could u possibly add in the battle of Rennel island? If u don't know what that is, either Google it or ask me.

You're right, I don't know anything about Rennel Island.....I'll look it up though.

Putting missions in place isn't too hard to do, just lot's of tedious typing that can easily be screwed up by a couple of misspelled words. Lurker did a lot of his mission building outside of the Mission Editor. Actually, it's better if you don't use the Mission Editor for some of the missions. The Mission Editor has a funny way of "saving" some of the built missions...... where you should still open up the mission .mis file with NotePad to edit some of the entries. I forget just what to do, but then again I forget where I put my glasses too!

Mission building still takes some trial and error game play. Like RSRDC's idea of having so many different way points, with different travel speeds between them. It's a good idea to have a ship change speeds as you follow it.....makes game play unpredictable. But, when you drop a ships travel speed to less than half its rated MaxSpeed from its .sim file, you'll not hear a thing through the use of the subs Hydrophones yourself. Even if the target is in eyesight of the sub.

I've also seen where a ship's route cuts right through a small land mass. I don't have to see it in-game to know that ship never see's the light of day on the other side of the land. So, you put a ship into spawning in-game only to have it crash/sink when it hits an island. That's one reason why Truk Island usually doesn't have ships spawn/end within the harbor. The narrow entrance is too hard to make sure every mission ship can make it through, without hitting something. So, most of the time the ships spawn/end outside the harbor.

You gave me another idea, can u add in the air raids on Truk in feb. and April 1944? Also I have noticed some bugs in the game even with mods. One bug is that the base colors on the map don't change right away, like with Rabaul, after it was occupied by the japanese it was still blue. Another wierd thing is that sometimes there can be ships from one country sitting by an enemy base. Like one time I was patrolling off Rabaul after it was taken by Japan and there were a lot of Australian ships right by japanese controlled Rabaul.

The final big bug is that when i started a career with TMO + RSRDC in July 1945 Iwo Jima was still marked as red and there were still jap ships there, when there should be US ships and the island should be US controlled. So can u fix these problems? Also could u add more land defense guns to the bases and more harbor traffic? That would be cool.

I don't know, I've never looked at the issue of Dates/Time and which nationality holds what. I know there's a file that controls on whose side you're on, and when the side may change.....like the Italians....they flipped and flopped a couple of times. There's probably a file that controls a land base ownership just as well.

Probably. :D

I know I'll be getting into those Land Air Base files to add the additional planes to their inventory.

Ok, well u post and tell me if u found a way to fix those bugs or not. I have some more ideas, firstly, can u add some more ships to some nations? I think that the Dutch, Australian and British need more ships and aircraft. Also can u add in Japanese and German subs? That would be cool to see those. Can u also implement the battle of the Bismarck sea and other small engagements in 1943?

This is all awesome!

Would something like the Ohka/Baka work better?

Bettys delivering Bakas!

************************************************** *****

On a separate note, since we're talking ideas: Does anyone use the 3d TDC mod anymore? I can't get it to play nice with OTC (and OTC is well...a must have mod!)

Is it impossible to mod the stabilized azimuth line for determining target speed and/or using the stadimeter vertically to find AOB detailed here?

Thanks for the ideas guys. Keep them coming.....

As far as the dates/time is concerned for events in-game, I can tell you there are lots of errors within the game that prevents things from occurring. Due to these errors, either equipment doesn't become available, or specific traffic doesn't spawn simply because a date is in error.

An example can be found within some of the .eqp files that define when a certain piece of hardware comes into being.

Of all the things one can say bad about a computer, the one thing that's stellar is a computer's ability to count 1+1=2! Simple math is no problem (neither is the tuff stuff either). 24 hours in a day, 365 days a year is a no-brainier. Yet, you put dates like Sept. 31, 194whatever into the mix, the game will practically stop cold in its tracks. No such date as Sept 31st.....right......

got you thinking!!

So, the Devs put in the wrong date and the computer can't compute how a year is now 366 days long?!? You won't get a CTD because of it, but you won't get the upgrade either because the computer can't understand when to start the upgrade. There are also dates that overlap.....the end date is the same as the start date of a different piece of equipment. How can the computer figure out which piece of equipment to use if the same date covers two different pieces of equipment?

Stuff like that you'll find throughout the game.

Cleaning up the mess they left behind would be one hell of a challenge, if even doable. The game in that respect is SNAFU :shifty:

The sheer number of text and strings in files to check would crash a computer :smug:

Off topic but related to the messiness of this game:
Two months ago I re-installed my OS and today I installed this game, I run a defrag/ optimization prior of installing the game using AVG tuneup, went and checked the amount of fragmentation after installing SH4 v1.4. It had a amazing 2% fragmentation on a 360GG partitioned disk, after a new defrag I installed the "U-boat addon" and got the same result... 2% fragmentation.
(Up till now this is the only game I have which has that much fragmentation after a clean install). :nope:

I've seen one of those over at the Air Force Museum (that's what we call it around here....the official name is the "National Museum of the United States Air Force" :doh:). Jet propelled, traveling in excess of 500 mph, it would be pretty cool. I noticed my friend Peabody was working on adding such a model to the IJN planes for his and Keltos01 Japanese Sub Campaign mod which has never seen the light of day. Too bad! I noticed he hasn't been on the forum since 2013, probably not interested anymore.

I've found a couple of 3D models floating around on the web. I'll see if I can get one to work with SH4.

I doubt it. The line would need to be aligned to a particular bearing, and stay there, no matter which direction the sub may turn. The "L" key for "Locking" onto a target does something similar, but it locks onto an object and stays put no matter which direction the object, or sub moves. The point being, this function is hard coded. We don't have access to the script that makes the "Lock" function happen.

Nor do we have access to the way the Stadimeter double image is moved on the screen. It's vertical travel is also hard coded. I'd like to have it work as in real life to move vertically and horizontally for finding AoB.....but it isn't going to happen. :-?

It seems the SH5 crowd is "patching" the .exe file. Are they manipulating the hard code?

Hey again, I have some more ideas, I think it would be cool to start a career before the war starts and the attack on Pearl Harbor was implemented to the game, also, to go along with the bombing raids idea, I would like to see some of the early war jap bombing raids, like on Manila and wake, also it would be cool to see the "destruction of force Z" in the game. So, what do u think, cap'n scurvy, can this stuff be in the mod?

Starting a new career to watch it happen would be great.:yeah:
With this game you can choose to either start in port or out at sea, I do wonder if we'd survive tho.:haha:

Fred has a mod, Pre-Pearl Harbor Career Start. There are different versions for RFB, etc.,etc.

Hey guys, I have more ideas, in the game there are small sail boats (sampans, fishing boats, etc.) And I'm sure many have noticed that they can back up like they have a motor well they don't. So, can u make there movement more realistic? I think it would be good to see them act like sail boats. Also can u add in more minor boats and ships, like trawlers and some trawlers towing barges and some more sailing ships? It would be cool to see more diversity in the minor boats and they can be used as harbor traffic or we could see them on the sea.